Time for the final installment of the 2014 Texas Thaw coverage! Thanks again to the Torques for putting on another great event. For all of the latest info on the Texas Thaw go to the official website.
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a kustom art piece from Chaotic Customs (shown below), a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Stray Kat Kustoms!
Here’s the prize package from Chaotic Customs including a custom painted bowling pin, a Chaotic Customs T-Shirt and a Harvey’s Seatbelt Wallet in your choice of trucker wallet on a chain or regular. (Motor Not Included)
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
Overall the Texas Thaw was a blast. I did have 1 issue though. At some point during a day long event you might get a bit thirsty or hungry, which did happen to me. So I went over to try The Bomb food wagon’s food, uh damn, long line there. So I went over and got in the longer line for the track’s concession stand. I don’t know what made me choose that longer line but something in my head though since it was the track concession stand that they’d be ready for crowd and they’d get me through the line quickly. WRONG. I was talking with folks so I didn’t realize that it had taken 45 minutes to get up to the order window. Right… well okay I’ll get a cheeseburger, some fries and 2 bottles of water, it may take 15 minutes or so to get my food so a 2nd bottle of water might come in handy. I was 75 minutes short in that estimation. That’s right boys and girls. After paying $17 for a double cheese burger (fatboy upgraded at the window), some fries, and 2 bottles of water, it took over 2 hours start to finish to actually stand in line and then get the food. That’s with 6 people giving up on waiting in front of me before I even got to order. Northstar Dragway, YOU FAIL when it comes to the concession stand. There is no excuse for a wait like that. A.) make a separate line for the folks that only want drinks and serve them out of a big beer cooler. B.) load your grill with burgers when you have a line instead of dropping them when you get the ticket up next. I saw one guy who waited 30 minutes from ordering to get 2 corndogs and 2 nachos, that’s an order that should have been up in about 90 seconds.
Okay enough of that bitching. I had to say it out loud and I had to say it where it will show up in google searches.
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a kustom art piece from Chaotic Customs (shown below), a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Stray Kat Kustoms!Â
Here’s the prize package from Chaotic Customs including a custom painted bowling pin, a Chaotic Customs T-Shirt and a Harvey’s Seatbelt Wallet in your choice of trucker wallet on a chain or regular. (Motor Not Included)
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
For the last few years the Vintage Torque Fest put on by the folks of Vintage Torque DVD‘s on the first weekend of May. I give promoter John Wells a lot of hell for changing the date of the show because it now means the show conflicts with the Stray Kat 500. Since I do not own a flux capacitor equipped Delorean (which wouldn’t fit the criteria of either show) I must choose. 9 hours each way or 3.5 hours each way… Sorry John.
But just because I can’t make it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bust your butt to get there. Go here and find out all of the info. Here’s what I saw the first 2 years.
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a kustom art piece from Chaotic Customs, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Stray Kat Kustoms!
Here’s the prize package from Chaotic Customs including a custom painted bowling pin, a Chaotic Customs T-Shirt and a Harvey’s Seatbelt Wallet in your choice of trucker wallet on a chain or regular. (Motor Not Included)
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
The day turned out quite nice weather wise. I should have spent more time shooting when I got there but there were people to see, stories to tell and memories of a fallen friend to share. The sun came out and gave me a decent little sunburn, I wandered the pits seeing old friends, meeting new ones. I have to say I dig this event. The cars are cool, the people are cool and the money goes to the USO/Unite for Troops.
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a kustom art piece from Chaotic Customs, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Stray Kat Kustoms!
Here’s the prize package from Chaotic Customs including a custom painted bowling pin, a Chaotic Customs T-Shirt and a Harvey’s Seatbelt Wallet in your choice of trucker wallet on a chain or regular. (Motor Not Included)
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
March 1, 2014 marks the second time that I went down to Denton, TX to the Texas Thaw put on by the Torques Car Club. The 1/8th mile Northstar Dragway was again the host for the 7th time. The car show area was overflowing just as last year and the drag pits were as well. Lots of vintage steel on hand for show and go.
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a kustom art piece from Chaotic Customs (shown below), a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Stray Kat Kustoms!Â
Here’s the prize package from Chaotic Customs including a custom painted bowling pin, a Chaotic Customs T-Shirt and a Harvey’s Seatbelt Wallet in your choice of trucker wallet on a chain or regular. (Motor Not Included)
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
This weekend should be fun one. There are 3 events going on this weekend that I felt I must be at. I’m taking vacation from the day job on Friday afternoon so that I can head out on trek to cover 3 events in 2 different states in 24 hours, oh and then there’s the bit of the extra state of Oklahoma that I have to drive through to get to the 3rd event. I must be crazy.
The plan is to load up all of my gear in the daily driver and head first to Park City, KS for the Park City Chill. You can find out more info on the show in my 1 Month Warning post on the show here. Usually the show takes a few hours to cover but then again I’m usually there on a Saturday, I’m hoping that the Friday afternoon timing will mean less spectators. At this point I know quite a few people at almost any show that I go to so I do get a bit slowed down talking to all of my friends. Not a bad thing except when time is tight. Maybe since it’s Friday more folks will be at work :).
After that I’ll head downtown into Wichita towards the Go Away Garage for the Artist At Large & Friends Art Show at 5pm. Amazing artists from around the country have turned in work to be on display for the show and locals that are attending have been encouraged to drive their cool rides to the event. Since I really don’t want to show specific pieces of art here, I will probably only take a couple of establishing photos inside of the crowd and general display. Outside I’ll do what I can to show you what shows up, but the weather is looking iffy so we’ll see what shows.
Once I’ve had my fun at the Go Away Garage, it’s back in the daily driver and southbound again. I’ll trek off into the night headed into Oklahoma, somewhere I will get tired and grab a hotel. Fully rested and ready to go again on Saturday I’ll finish the trip to the Northstar Dragway in Denton, TX. If you’ve driven south down I-35 into TX and seen a big salvage yard on the west side of the road, you just missed Northstar Dragway, it’s just between CTC Auto Ranch and the railroad tracks. The event is the Texas Thaw put on by the Dallas Chapter of the Torques Car Club. The Texas Thaw is a vintage drag race and car show event put on to raise money to send care packages to our men and women in the armed services over seas. A great event for a great cause. For more into on the show go to the official site here and be sure to check out my coverage of last year’s event here.
Earlier this year Big Ken of the Torques asked me if I was interested in doing one more special edition of my Calendar For Charity project featuring photos of the 2013 Texas Thaw. The Calendars are as of now in my possession from the printer and will be in the official booth of the show on Saturday for sale! If you are attending the show, there are only 75 copies in existence so if you want one, get over to the booth to get one as soon as you get to the show.
Finally after all of that is said and done, it’s a 6 hour jaunt back north to get home. Last year I got home around 10pm and joined some birthday celebrations for a friend at the bar. I think I’ll be headed straight to bed this time. Sunday I’ll get the photos all up on the site and set up to show off for the following 2 weeks. My day job is temporarily changing my job title and I will be largely unavailable for a couple of weeks. I hope to get the Hot Rod Stencil shirts in for shipping in the next week or so, as soon as I can I will have them in the mail for all of you that pre-ordered.
If you want to this blog in your email inbox each time the blog goes live, go on up to the top right hand corner of the website and enter your email address. The last day of each month I randomly pick 1 subscriber to win a prize package. This month’s prize is a pinstriped piece from Pinstriping By Lizzie, a Royboy Knit Winter Hat & a shirt from Hot Rod Hill Climb!
Thank you to the first 2 sponsors of my site, quite frankly the only 2 that I’ve asked to sponsor the site so far. If you’d like to help sponsor Royboy Productions and provide the koolest car show coverage to folks worldwide, click here to ask me about it.
As I type this, it’s 10:45 on Thursday night, less than 12 hours until this post goes live. About 8 hours until I have to be at my day job… and I as started this post I honestly had no idea what I should write. Today, Thursday Jan. 23, 2014 is the largest traffic day that this blog has ever had. After a slow winter where I struggled to find you good fresh content, finally I got to get out to my first show of 2014 and I can see that you appreciate the fresh content. Over 700 views today with a previous record of 560 for the blog, what did I do to deserve that? Thanks folks, when I see that you dig what I’m doing enough to check it out that much, it’s all worth it.
The Future
Here we are at the end of January, before I know it I’ll be up to my eyeballs in car shows and I won’t remember how boring this winter was. February has 3 events that I’m planning on attending, should be putting about 1100 miles on the car. I am hoping to spend an afternoon with a family I know in Wichita that is full of gearheads with a killer collection of rides. The following weekend the plan is to head down and check out the Model A Club Swap Meet. I typically don’t buy much but there’s always that one thing that you see someone else got that you need and had the cash for. So I go… and I never seem to find it in time.
After that it’s a big windshield time weekend. First heading to Bartle Hall in KC to cover the World of Wheels Autorama for you. Later that afternoon I make the trip from KC to Tulsa to an old buddy’s spare room. Sunday early I’ll head to the Quiktrip Center and the Darryl Starbird Car Show. This is the 50th edition of the show and it promises to be a good one. Finally we have a weekend where I don’t have anything planned…yet. Either it will get filled with a couple of shop visits or shooting some features, either way the weekend will be used to create some fresh content for you folks to enjoy.
For the month of March I should be at about 1400 miles, it adds up quickly! Magazine articles can help offset the travel costs but those don’t pay until month and months later, if at all. Another way to offset that is for get paid by you folks to shoot your rides when I’m on the road. If you have a car that you’d like me to shoot, let me know here and we’ll figure out a time and place, I’m very affordable. 🙂
The first weekend of March I’ll be off for another double header weekend. First up will be the Texas Thaw drags and car show held at the Northstar Dragway in Denton, TX. That evening I’ll make my way up to Wichita to catch a hotel for the night. Sunday morning will be off to the Chill in Park City before returning home to edit photos and get them up on the site. Then there’s an open weekend that I hope to head to KC and catch up with some friends and shoot their shop and hopefully feature a couple of their cars.
After that it’s off to Texas again for the Goodguys Spring Lonestar Nationals at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. A 12 hour drive for a 5 or 6 hour stay at the show. Hopefully I find something that I can shoot a feature on for the site while I’m there. The two following weeks are open as of now but I will be looking for cars to shoot those weekends. That’s a basic rundown of what’s going on between now and when I leave for the Lonestar Roundup at the begin of April.
Why?
Why the hell do I do this? After putting in more than 50 hours a week at a day job why do I spend all of my extra money traveling all over the midwest to shoot car show coverage, edit it, pay to host it online and then just give it all away to you for free? I’m nuts. Well that’s what most think. I’m hoping that I can create enough kool content to keep you coming back every day, and maybe kool enough that you’ll share it with your friends and they’ll come check it out too. If we get enough viewers here then maybe the future sponsors can cover all of that gas money, all of the hotel money, all of the show entry fees, all of the website costs. That would be a dream come true. Well, that would be partly a dream come true.
The real dream, the one that haunts me at my day job, the one that keeps me from concentrating on much of anything else is doing this full time. Selling my house and everything that won’t fit in an RV which is big enough to pull my Galaxie in a trailer. Spending each week traveling from one show to the next, stopping at pro and private shops along the way, shooting shop visits, tech articles, and features as much as possible to keep you folks full up on the best content possible. Maybe I am nuts. Or maybe that’s how this thing goes to the next level.
It’s going to be a busy couple of months but when you folks pull me aside to tell me thanks for all of the effort, it’s worth it. When I see a Royboy hat or beanie or shirt from across a show, and I have no idea who it is that’s wearing it. It’s worth it. When someone attends a show for the first time or gets their car done so they can get to a certain show that I’ve featured and they tell me that it’s my coverage that made them do it. It’s worth it.
For those that saw me at the Starbird-Devlin show that I’ve been covering all week long and wanted to know where to get one of my Model A Hot Rod Stencil Shirts I put up a new page here for you to order them. There are a few sizes in stock now from my last order, for those that are not in stock put your order in now to get one. I can’t afford to have a bunch printed and just sit in my trunk for 8 months so if you want one, you’d better get one ordered.
Stay tuned next week for some news on the Royboy New Blood Award that I’ll be giving away at the KKOA Leadsled Spectacular this summer.
For those that don’t know you can catch all kinda good links from my Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and a bunch of kool stuff on Tumblr and Instagram.
The Texas Thaw is an awesome drag race/car show event held March 1st at the North Star Dragway along I-35 just north of Denton, TX. In 2013 I made my first trip down to the Thaw, what I found was a great selection of vintage drag machines and hot rods that were out taking some passes on the track.
I can’t believe the year is half over already, it seems like just a few weeks ago I was picking my car up from Jeff Myers’ Premier Body & Paint in Arkansas City, KS and headed home with my new old school paint.
Of course on that very trip home the generator finally gave up the ghost. I’d been nursing it for awhile and it was just time to finally do the upgrade, read all about the nightmare that turned into here.
The first event of the year was about 2 weeks after I picked up the car from Jeff, and I was going to be showing the Galaxie for the first time at an indoor show. The legendary Starbird show in Wichita, now the Starbird-Devlin show, but still pretty damn cool for someone that has been going to that show for 30 years. The show was a lot of fun, parking my car with some of the legendary Fundamentals cars was a huge honor. See the show coverage here Part 1, Part 2, Part 3Â and Part 4
The show was just too much fun.
February 2013
February is always a bit busier than January around here. Kansas City hosts the World of Wheels Autorama, Darryl Starbird does his show in Tulsa, and The Chill goes down in Park City, KS.
Going to KC always means seeing my buddies of Los Punk Rods. They are always working on something interesting. KC WOW Show Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
March is always a bit slow in the area here. This year I went down to The Chill in Denton, TX, it was worth the trip and I plan on going again and again. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Then a couple of weeks later it was time to head back to Texas for the Goodguys Spring Lonestar Nationals Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
The first trip of April is typically the Lonestar Roundup in Austin, TX. This was the first time the Galaxie went and it was awesome! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Art Shots
A couple of weeks later we gathered for the HAMBBQ
The next day I took advantage of a chance to go hang in the pits for the #20 Matt Kenseth car for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race.
Then it was off to Mulvane, KS to Chaotic Customs for their Open House. Chaotic has been responsible for helping me sort out some of the mechanical issues that were out of my mechanic knowledge or out of my time frame. Thanks! Part 1, Part 2
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 May 2013
The first Friday in May is always Stray Kat 500 time in Dewey, OK. It rained, it sleeted, it may have snowed a touch but it was still perfect. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Then the Galaxie and I headed off to Springfield, MO for the Queen City Riot Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Father’s Day weekend is always the time to take Dad to the Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure’s Father’s Day Show Part 1, Part 2
Big Brothers Big Sisters held a small 100 car show at the JC Penny’s parking lot in Salina, KS
Winfield Garage Car Show was a lot of fun, hanging out with some great friends at a nice event, we need to make this a 200 car show next year! Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Thanks for going along with me for the ride so far, there’s still a ton of events left to go for this year so get yourself out to one and say hi. If you want some custom photos of your car, give me a yell using the contact link above.
 
 
 
